Category Archives: Random thoughts

Books, Random thoughts, Teaching

Time Marches On

I thought I’d just pop in so you all knew I remembered I had a blog. I know blogging is dead and all, yet I still read blogs and have a blog, so it’s probably sort of like classical music in that sense.

College started up, and I have several wonderful new students as well as my returning students. I absolutely adore some of the students I teach and I’m looking forward to a great semester. I’m sorry I had to leave some students at the other school I’d taught at for 4 1/2 years, but my schedule is much more manageable without that job…it’s hard to quit things, isn’t it? In any case, it was super weird and a bit emotional returning to my studio there for the first time since before the pandemic: I distinctly remember leaving and being excited for Spring Break and visiting my friend April in Atlanta, and then…never returning.

My early morning school job officially starts up next week, and while I’m a little nervous about the early mornings, especially as the days get shorter (it’s so hard to wake up and drive to work in the dark, for instance), I’m excited to get back to it. My overall schedule is easier than it was last year, even with actually commuting to my college job, and I think it’ll be a good semester.

Wednesday night: My parents stopped by overnight on their way home from a road trip. They were here for about 12 hours total as they wanted to get back on the road and get home. They ended up having some car trouble along the way home and the part their car needed might have been a year long wait or more, so they ended up buying a new car, which seems a bit crazy, yet, they didn’t have any better options at that point. We were able to admire their new car and chat a bit.

The weekend was fun: pizza and wine with friends on Friday night, and then most of the day Saturday and Sunday I spent at a Suzuki Workshop (Suzuki Principles in Action) in person at SIUE (in Edwardsville). It was a good learning opportunity, a course about HOW to teach, not what to teach, and I learned quite a bit. I have a follow-up assignment to do over the next two months, which involves recording myself as well as answering some questions/short essays. I’ve spent most of the pandemic trying to further improve and educate myself as a teacher, and it’s been really fun, learning. The more I know, the more confidence I have that I’m doing the best I can for my students.

Sunday night I cooked this: Skillet Shrimp and Orzo. I really liked it! I had been getting tired of cooking before I made it, but I think sometimes when I’m tired I just don’t want to cook, not that cooking is in itself tiring. I made myself put together a meal plan for the next two weeks.

And then yesterday was off, Labor Day! We were going to go for a hike, but ended up getting lazy and just hanging out around the house more. I sort of regret that I didn’t get out and about, but it was a bit hotter than originally predicted and I’m just so ready for fall weather. I think I was run down from the workshop in addition to just not wanting to deal with people or hot weather. It was a nice relaxing day and I didn’t work at all, other than a couple tiny things.

I do belong to two unions, and have mixed feelings about my union membership (one union is great, has gotten me raises, the other…not so much) but firmly believe that collective bargaining is on average, a good thing, and that workers make the world work and deserve way more than they and we actually get.

I haven’t mentioned books in awhile, so let me end with some books I’ve read recently:

Books I’ve loved: The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré, People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, Golden Girl by Elin Hilderbrand, The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley, The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward

Books I’ve liked: The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst, The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave , Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge, House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Nonfiction I enjoyed/learned from: The Pandemic Century by Mark Honigsbaum, A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls Lanier

Random thoughts

Staycation isn’t what it’s cracked up to be

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I’ve taken this week off from teaching in order to rest and recuperate before school starts up next week and my new teaching schedules goes into order. In typical fashion, however, since Louie was still working and we couldn’t go anywhere, I ended up signing up for another online training course, which I thought was 3 hours a day (it is) but then had 8 hours of video observations on top of that. Between that, getting things ready for next week and a few other little things here and there, I don’t feel like I’ve had any sort of break! I suppose I never planned it to be a fun vacation week, simply a week off from my normal schedule.

I have had a break from teaching, which is nice, and means I’ll be happy to see everybody again next week. I hope the schedule works out well, and I’m especially excited to start my Creative Ability Development (Improvisation) Classes up again.

Unrelated, I have a few new potential students and some who have been wait-listed. I do turn students away as well, usually with a recommendation if possible. I realized that sometimes those students will find their way back: I’ll turn them away one year, and a few years later they will contact me again, and I don’t always remember until I am searching for their email for some reason and come across the original one! Then I wonder what if I could have fit them in a few years earlier, how would our relationship and their skill be different? I can’t take everybody though, there are only so many viable teaching hours in a day!

My early morning teaching job starts up again in early-mid-September and I am both looking forward to it (we’re in person, it’s back to normal which I’ve never taught in, masks ARE required) and dreading it (it’s really early, COVID fears, I don’t know what normal is so I’m a little nervous about it). I’m sure once it gets started it will be lovely: getting up so early has changed my wakeup time throughout the summer—7 to 7:30 am is now my normal, and while that’s still usually with an alarm, without an alarm I might wake up anywhere between 6:30 am and 8 am. The truth is it has also changed my normal bedtime, which is now around 10 pm, sometimes staying up reading after that, and I’ll have to bump that up a little if possible during the year. I don’t know how much of my sleeping pattern changes are due to aging, and how much are due to having to change, and I never will.

When I was in my 20’s people always told me once I had kids I wouldn’t be able to sleep in anymore. While I’m sure that was true, for me I never was able to sleep in again after the election of 2016…the stress got me up early for months after that and then I just couldn’t anymore. I do usually wake up much like I did as a kid, ready to go and get doing things, though sometimes things means checking email and doomscrolling a bit in between writing emails, and drinking coffee. Anyway, so people without kids will never know if they would have lost their ability to sleep in as they aged, or whether they would have enjoyed continuing to sleep well and long.

I’m rambling a bit, so maybe I’ll let you go now. Do you find yourself able to sleep more or less as you’ve gotten older? Do you get up the same time on non-work days as you do on work days? Do you get enough sleep on a regular basis?

Random thoughts, Teaching

Getting Ready

I’ve been working all week setting up my studio schedule for the fall. I’ve also been working on using a new website/program for my calendar…I have hesitated to use a program for organizing my lessons just because I already have my systems in place for invoices, tax prep, etc, and it seems like anything I add is trying to duplicate things I already use but not the way I want. I’ve decided to bite the bullet here though, and try it out for the year, and I’ve gotten 95 percent of the data uploaded.

I’ve changed the way I run my studio for the fall to a set monthly rate and by the semester, and it’s been a challenge getting that information out. I know parents get a lot of things to read, but when I send something with the subject line Very Important Please Read, it usually is, because otherwise my emails have subject lines like No Lessons Tuesday or Recital is November 17th or things like that. Yes, I tend to summarize the email in the subject so people know what it will be about.

It’s a busy time for new referrals, and I wish I had another day I could add students to and still have weekends, but that’s just not possible at this time. Anyway, I’m excited to make a bit more money this fall and streamline my operations! (And if you are a current student reading this, seriously, just at least skim my emails and mark your calendars, okay? I spend a lot of time crafting each one and it’s much easier if I don’t have to then go through and talk with 40 people individually…)

My sister and her kids visited last week, and we had a lot of fun. We went to the Aquarium one morning, and the kids loved it. I wouldn’t say it is a great Aquarium, but there were some nice exhibits and it was very well done and fun for young people.

We made shark hats. My coloring isn’t much better than hers…hers is definitely better for her age.

We went to Grant’s Farm another morning and it was a bit hot and crowded for us, but we still had a nice time. Not much mask wearing, even in the cramped quarters on the tram or in the Biergarten. They didn’t require it, but common sense should (and it should be required.)

Grant’s Farm is always trying to get more money out of your pockets. We paid them money to feed their goats, cows, llamas, birds, etc, and also shelled out for a camel ride for my niece.

Otherwise we just hung out, tried to stay out of the heat, had some nice meals, went to playgrounds, and such. It was exhausting but great to spend time with the kids, and of course my sister Leslie as well.

We had some bad storms the other night. We were fortunate that we didn’t lose power that night as many did, though we did lose power the next day for a few hours, likely while the power company was trying to restore power to others. We did have a chair get blown over.

I saw this the next day and texted Louie about how we had some storm damage. Before he got too worried, I sent that picture.

My nephew really liked sitting in the blue chair.

Louie went away for the weekend to visit some friends, but I have some stuff tomorrow so I stayed behind. I decided to make some jam and mustard today, so I made rhubarb strawberry with stuff from the freezer, a bourbon brown sugar mustard, and a swiss chard walnut pesto with swiss chard from the garden that we kept not using to cook with. The first two are canned and the pesto is in the freezer for the future. I also have a basil plant, so I might should make some traditional pesto this week as well!

I’m taking this upcoming week off from teaching to get ready for the fall. I think it’s important to have down time in order to recharge. We have a short airbnb trip planned for a couple nights, but otherwise I’m around, taking one more online course and catching up on things around the house.

Books, Random thoughts, Travel

Family Visit and such

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I was so busy telling you about our Arkansas Trip that I haven’t told you about our trip to visit family in Chautauqua, New York. My sister Leslie and her family own a house in Sherman, New York, which is near the Chautauqua Music Festival where her husband works in the summers. This is the third year in a row we’ve gone out to visit, and it was lovely.

I won’t do a play by play, but instead share some pictures and tell you a few things we did.

Walked around the grounds of the Chautauqua Institute–this is near the belltower.
Hiked down to the Chautauqua Gorge but it was too watery to go further, so we went back up and hiked along the Cusamano Trail instead for a few miles.

I believe this was at Long Point State Park, where we walked around a little bit.

Not pictured: Southern Tier Brewery Company–great place to have some beer and some food, nice patio.

Luca driving a wooden car around.

We didn’t go on the Chautauqua Belle, but maybe another time. We walked along the Lake aways from here, and then got ice cream nearby. We eat more ice cream while in Chautauqua than we do all year long!

The grounds of the Institute again, you can see the Bell Tower on the left.

Luca wearing cool sunglasses for the Fourth of July.

We walked around the Audubon Community Nature Center in Jamestown, NY and saw lots of birds and chipmunks.

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I taught Luca awhile back to show us his “bebo” or belly button and never tire of asking.

We also got ice cream at Bemus Point, had dinner at a place in Sherman called Pine Junction, lunch at Stedman Corners Cafe, and coffee and lunch at Crown Street Roasting Company. And we ate some delicious meals at “home” as well.

Leslie went above and beyond with this meal!

It was a week long trip, which was pretty long, but it was nice to spend time with the kids and just hang out and relax. There are always more things to do next time!

We stopped at Taco Johns on our way home!

Anyway, then we got back home to this…

What else have I been up to? We had our annual fireworks barbecue, which is a cookout we have the night of the Sublette Park/Hill fireworks. We weren’t sure if it was happening due to COVID, but it did, and it was small but fun. We’ve been eating out a bit more than before, though trying to keep cooking, so usually just once or twice a week. I’ve been keeping up on the garden and just pickled a whole bunch of green beans today, three jars from the garden! (I make dilly beans, which might be my favorite sort of pickle.)

I played an outdoor concert with Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis, which was held in a parking lot…have I played a concert in a parking lot before? I want to say, yes, actually. I played a concert with my band as well, in a front yard as part of the Kingsbury Ensemble’s A Little Lawn Music.

That made for a busy weekend, so I was happy to have this weekend entirely off. I don’t have the energy I used to have…or the desire to run around as much. I have been trying to be mindful of that when accepting jobs for the fall, how much I teach now in addition to how much I do actually really enjoy having some downtime. I’m behind on gardening tasks anyway!

I’ve been doing a lot of reading of course, and thought I’d share some of what I’ve been reading lately for you to consider:

Books I really enjoyed: Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins, Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins,, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian, These Tangled Vines by Julianne Maclean, Anxious People by Frederick Bachman, 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand, Nomadland by Jessica Bruder

Books I liked well enough: Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline, The Elephant of Belfast by S. Kirk Walsh, The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian, The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas, Milk Fed by Melissa Broder, We Love You Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Cozy Mysteries I enjoyed: The Bennett Sisters Series by Lise McClendon

Nonfiction I found interesting: The Body, A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson, How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman

I know I didn’t give you any information about the books, but you can read a bit of them online 🙂

Anyway, we have some interesting plans coming up: biking tomorrow on the Katy Trail (at least that’s the plan), a camping trip to Hawn State Park, various family members visiting. We also bought tickets for Jazz and for the Symphony for the fall so that’s going to be different than this year! Work wise things are still pretty busy these next two weeks because I’m doing another online seminar (I am obsessed with learning right now) and teaching as well. I am taking a whole week off in August though, just to relax, and we are getting away for one more weekend before school starts up again. I don’t want to think about summer ending, but I know that life moves on…and I do love fall weather. I am hoping to get a better life-work balance going forward, though I know that is unlikely to happen while I have my early morning school job.

What have you been up to? Read any interesting books to share? Done any interesting things that you recommend to others?

Random thoughts

Arkansas Travelers: Two Nights in Fayetteville and Bentonville

So far I’ve told you about  Little Rock, Hot Springs, our wonderful cabin in the Ozarks near the town of Pettigrew, and our short trip to Fort Smith.

That leaves our last two nights on the Arkansas journey, two nights south of Fayetteville at a lovely airbnb in a bit of a rural area, but not as rural as in the Ozarks, since it was about 15 minutes drive to Fayetteville.

I had forgotten until we were getting close that our last airbnb had not only a hottub, but a pool as well. It was a hot day, so we thought we’d check in, get unpacked, and go for a swim before dinner.

What a beautiful building this was!

The cottage was designed by a couple who were an architect and landscape designers teaching at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, so it was gorgeous and well designed.

And the pool was lovely!

We had a nice swim and enjoyed just relaxing in the pool. We learned that Louie can’t float on his back–I tried to teach him, but while I can float on my back, I cannot teach somebody else to do so.

We had a dinner reservation at Vetro 1925 in Fayetteville, so we got cleaned up and headed to Fayetteville a little early. I wanted to see the house where the Clintons lived while they were in Fayetteville–it was technically a museum but not open anymore, partly due to COVID, partly (it seemed) due to state budget cuts.

It looked like an easy walk there from where we parked near the restaurant, but it ended up being really hilly, up and down and up and down, sometimes very steep!

It was sort of anticlimatic when we got there! And I’m not sure what the deal is with the pig.

It is a pretty house though, and I’m sorry it wasn’t open as a museum.

Then we got to back to where the restaurant and car were, and got seated ahead of our reservation.

Wow! This meal did not disappoint. We split a bunch of things, which we like to do, and while I was marginally annoyed that they charged us for splitting, when we never actually asked to split and only said we would be sharing everything, I decided that was a small thing. (To be clear: we shared about 4 dishes, and said we were sharing, and they brought some of the dishes on two plates, which we did not ask for, and they did charge us extra for that.)

Not pictured, the salad course. Everything was tasty, though the tiramisu was a bit over the top and might have focused more on something other than chocolate syrup…

We went back to the cabin or whatever you want to call it after dinner and relaxed. I actually don’t recall if we got in the hottub or not, but I bet we did.

The next morning we were heading to Bentonville and the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. We ate oatmeal in the kitchen, made coffee, and headed out.

This is where the day got very Walmart centered. Bentonville is where Walmart got started and it is a scene there. Mountain biking, tourism, and this gorgeous Museum. I have a lot of feelings about Walmart, few of them good, but we had heard that the Museum was excellent.

I wrote a long rant about Walmart and how they are responsible for so many issues in our country through years of political lobbying, low wages, etc, but I decided to just let it go…I’ll just sum it up to say that I was excited to see the museum because I love art, but I won’t wax poetic over the Waltons for spending a small amount of their fortune on a museum which only improves their social standing. They have a lot of money. I do things for free too and give many charitable donations and I don’t make signs all over my house bragging about it.

ANYWAY sorry about all my soapboxing! Back to the trip report 🙂

I have to say, the Crystal Bridges Museum is really lovely. It’s a little confusing at first, because there is a lot going on between indoor and outdoor paths, a bit of construction, COVID, and a sort of open area you enter without obvious maps or welcome area. But we found our way, first to the outside paths because we were afraid it would start raining soon…

And then we made it inside. The galleries were well laid out, kept things moving while being interesting and informative. We didn’t find the collection to be overwhelmingly large, which was nice. We walked around for a few hours and decided to take a break to have lunch at the cafe, which was very nice.

After lunch, we decided to leave, so we headed to downtown Bentonville to check it out. It was…lovely. Like a disneyland version of what small towns used to look like before Walmart decimated them! So glad they kept one! It was cute and shiny, and full of art and bicycles.

We didn’t get to see the Walmart Museum as I’d hoped, because COVID meant reservations and I hadn’t made one, because my priority had been the art museum–which had originally required reservations as well but then changed recently. We walked around, visited a bike shop, a coffee shop with the worst bathrooms we’d seen in such a nice area for awhile, a fancy Walmart grocery store, and some lovely paths through some Gardens.

We decided to eat an early dinner in Fayetteville, and went to Hugo’s, which was a long running favorite of locals Burger place. It was great! We had a bit of a wait even at 5 pm, but nothing bad at all and we enjoyed the ambience and the food. It felt a bit more “real” than Bentonville, and we appreciated that. I’m sure that Bentonville feel is right for many, just not me.

We enjoyed the hot tub and visited with our host’s horses after dinner, and then watched some tv while it rained a bit outside.

The next morning we headed towards Pea Ridge Military Park, which is an NPS site, so you know it’ll be well done. It was a gross rainy day, so we decided against any hiking, and just visited the Vistor’s Center and then did the loop road. We did pop out at every stop and took short walks as they were there (it wasn’t raining too hard, but it was soggy and buggy for sure). It gets tempting sometimes, to just stay in the car, but we decided since we were there we were going to pop out at every stop. There weren’t any we regretted.

It was interesting to learn about a Civil War Battle and really made me think about how awful War is and how there are many people who glorify violence, when it isn’t that at all. So many soldiers (and civilians) died and were wounded, and for what? Surely there are better ways. There are so many wars going on, right now…it just makes you really think about life, and how so much of what we have in our lives we take for granted and it could all be taken away in an instance.

In any case, we learned quite a bit. The museum in the Visitor’s Center was a nice start, and then the signs and brochure are helpful along the way. We had visited somewhat nearby Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in a previous year, and this was a later battle. If I’m remembering correctly!

Also the Trail of Tears went by here. What a horrible thing that was.

They had all the cannons lined up where they would have been.

There was some nice scenery as well!

The Elkhorn Tavern, which I think was rebuilt for this, but I’m not sure. Sometimes the NPS is sneaky like that, you think something was still there and it is actually a reconstruction, so I don’t know. I could probably research it, but where’s the fun?

Anyway, after visiting Pea Ridge, we hit the road for home. It was about a 4 hour drive home, and we made it by dinner time.

Arkansas was a lovely time. We especially enjoyed our last two airbnb’s, the Buckstaff Bathhouse, Pinnacle Mountain State Park, Little Rock Central NHS, the grounds of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, eating at Brave New Restaurant, visiting Crystal Bridges, eating at Vetro 1925 and Hugo’s, and just generally being away from St Louis! We are sorry that the Bill Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock was closed due to COVID, and that the visitor’s center and museum in Ft. Smith were closed for the same reason as those would have been great to see.

As more time now has passed, I will still say we enjoyed the trip, though we are sad we didn’t get to do a bit camping/out west trip this summer. Arkansas was nice, relaxing, and a lovely place to spend a week. If you are a Missourian especially, I recommend visiting sometime! We have also visited Eureka Springs in the past and it was great.

Random thoughts

Halfway Done

By many measures summer is already halfway done. I only mention this in order to freak myself out.

I promise I will still tell you about the portion of our trip to Fayetteville and Bentonville, but life got too busy! I just got back from a trip to visit my sister and her family, and I was busy doing very little there but the time flew by. Before I left I did a very intense online conference on Paul Rolland Pedagogy while doing a normal week of teaching and life…so things were a bit slammed.

The pandemic has brought some great online educational opportunities into my life, and I’ve taken advantage of quite a few, but it means adding things onto an already somewhat busy schedule. That week was intense…livestreams or videos from the time I got up until when I went to bed with the exception of the times I was teaching or some meals. I didn’t even finish all the videos, so I’m halfheartedly playing catchup this week, because everything goes offline this Sunday. I say halfheartedly because I definitely will watch all the main track videos but my original goal of watching all the videos isn’t likely to happen, and that’s okay.

I have two more courses I’m taking this month, and I’m looking forward to them both. I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful ideas and inspiration over the past year and my brain and heart are absolutely full of ideas on how to be a better teacher. I’m working through ideas in my head about what kind of teacher I want to be going forward and how to use and incorporate some new ideas I’ve learned.

I read an article recently about “drift” (that one of my friends had posted online). The idea behind “drift” is that you end up doing things in your life by just sort of “drifting” into them, rather than making deliberate choices. Going to grad school because it was next in life, getting married/having children because all your friends are, taking a good job offer because it seemed like a good job offer and others encouraged you, etc. I sort of drifted into teaching to supplement my income and because people thought I would be good at it. I never felt like one of those teachers that was really into it or loved it or any of that, but in the past year my attitude and approach has changed.

I have been immensely grateful for my ability to teach during the pandemic, and have found such satisfaction in my ability to relate to my students and help them through this time. It has changed my idea of my career and made me feel much more satisfied with what I’m doing.

On other notes: fun stuff! LIVE MUSIC! We bought symphony tickets for next season AND jazz tickets for next season. I have a band performance this Friday, and a concert with the Metropolitian Orchestra of St Louis on Sunday night. (I think I overextended myself this weekend, but it’ll be fine.) I find myself wanting to schedule and do things, and feeling like it’s a slippery slope back into the world of being too busy, yet I am ready to LIVE again, and I think (this may sound crazy but) I’d rather be out and about doing interesting things than sitting at home. The park near our house is doing fireworks this weekend so we have an outdoor party planned, and well, there’s just good things happening.

I watch the delta variant numbers with caution, and found the study out of Israel about the Pfizer vaccine being less effective against the delta variant to be concerning…but I will hold steady and hope that my Pfizer vaccine keeps me healthy, until the CDC tells me otherwise.

We have two more weekend getaways planned before the school year, one camping in a State Park, and a weekend stay in Southern Illinois at a little cabin on a pond. Between then and now, lots of teaching, reading, music, gardening, friends, etc.

How’s your summer going?